Star Wars - Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu

by L. Neil Smith

Vuffi Raa turned, followed Lando without a word.

  It was a long, long trip. The Sharu had discovered the same secret that many human cultures had: that if you make the floors of a public building slick enough, keep them polished and slippery, they’ll force the people who have to walk there into little mincing steps that magnify the distances and humble the spirit—just as high ceilings tend to do.

  Lando wasn’t having any. He took a few running steps and slid along the floor.

  “Wheee! This is fun! Come on, old tinhorn, try it!”

  “Master!” said the robot in a scandalized voice. “Have you no respect?”

  Lando stopped, gave the robot a sober look. “Not a grain of it—not when it’s being imposed on me by the architecture.”

  He took another running start, slid several meters this time. The robot had to hurry to catch up. By the time he had, he was very nearly his original height.

  “Lando,” he said, “speaking of architecture, there’s something very odd about this place.”

  Lando had to stop to catch his breath. He sat down on the floor.

  “That would be consistent with everything else around here. What is it this time?”

  “Well, from the entrance, the room looked circular, with a high domed ceiling, and perhaps a thousand meters across the floor to the altar.”

  Lando looked around. “Still seems that way to me.”

  “And to my vision, too. But, checking with radar and a number of extra senses, the room is ovoid—shaped like an egg with a big end and a small end. The big end was the entrance. The roof keeps getting closer to the floor.”

  Lando had another flash of his dreams. Something Vuffi Raa said earlier had triggered the first, something about the idea that it wasn’t he, the robot who was growing, but Lando who was shrinking. Yet if that were true—the tunnel had seemed to stay the same size the duration of the two-day trip—then the moving passageway had to have been shrinking. Lando had appeared to Vuffi Raa to be a hundred and ten or twenty meters tall in the beginning. Now he was back to being a little shy of two. The corridors had to have been shrinking accordingly.

  At that rate, when they reached the Mindharp, Vuffi Raa would tower over Lando, and they’d both have to travel on hands and knees to reach the artifact.

  “HALT!” said a voice.

  “What?” Vuffi Raa and Lando cried simultaneously.

  “IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO CROSS THE HALL.”

  “What happens if we do?” inquired Lando.

  The voice paused, seemed confused, “WELL, I’M NOT SURE I KNOW, NO ONE EVER ASKED ME. BUT IT IS NOT PERMITTED.”

  Lando opened his mouth—

  “Just who in the Hall are you, anyway?” Vuffi Raa said. Lando looked at the robot sharply. He hated having his good lines stolen. It was exactly what he’d been planning to say, himself.

  “WHY, I AM THE HALL, OF COURSE. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT THE EXHIBIT AS YOU APPROACH THE SACRED OBJECT.”

  “And it’s your job,” Lando suggested, “to make sure we do? Well, let’s get a few things straight here, Hall: I’ve been tugged along by everything that’s happened so far. I’m not going to let an empty room tell me what to do. Now answer me truthfully: does anything bad or dangerous happen to someone if they don’t skulk along the wall like vermin?”

  “NO, I DON’T SUPPOSE IT DOES.”

  “Then I guess we’ll go on. You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

  “I’M AFRAID I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.”

  “I thought you were going to say that. Come on, Vuffi Raa.”

  They continued across the broad expanse of the Hall, Lando sliding occasionally just to demonstrate his spirit. Vuffi Raa’s legs twinkled in the weird lighting. Lando had a thought:

  “Hey, Hall?”

  “YES, HAVE YOU DECIDED TO GO BACK TO THE WALL?”

  “No. I was just wondering: how much do you know about this place?”

  “ABOUT MYSELF?”

  “No, about the pyramid and the moving tunnel we were in before we got here.”

  The Hall considered. “A GREAT DEAL. WHAT, SPECIFICALLY WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW?”

  “Well, just to begin, what size am I?”

  A very long pause this time. “IN WHAT UNITS OF MEASUREMENT?”

  “Skip it, then. What I really want to know is: was I gigantic a few kilometers back, or was my friend, here, very tiny?”

  “DOES IT MATTER?”

  “Of course it matters. Would I ask, otherwise?”

  “Organic entities seem to take considerable delight in doing things to no good purpose,” Vuffi Raa offered. “But in this case, Hall, I’d be interested in knowing, too.”

  “Right,” Lando said under his breath, “so the two of us can compare notes on the frailties of humankind. Play your cards right, Vuffi Raa, cozy up to this Hall and they may make you a telephone booth or something.”

  “VERY WELL. THE CHANGES IN THE DIMENSION WERE WROUGHT ON THE ORGANIC LIFE-FORMS HERE. IT IS A NECESSARY PART OF THE PROCESS WHICH CULMINATES, PROPERLY, IN TRAVELING AROUND THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE HALL AS YOU ARE INTEN—”

  “Skip the commercial, Hall,” said Lando, “and get on with the explanation.”

  “VERY WELL. THIS INSTRUMENTALITY IS CAPABLE OF ALTERING THE PROPORTIONS OF INANIMATE MATTER AS WELL, BUT IT MUST BE IN THE PROXIMITY OF ORGANIC LIFE. OTHERWISE, IT IS ABSORBED BY THE MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS.”

  Vuffi Raa described his journey through the blue and red maze. “Can you tell me what all that was about?”

  “CERTAINLY. YOU WERE MISTAKEN BY THE WALL FOR A SMALL HOUSEKEEPING DEVICE AND ROUTED THERE FOR REPROGRAMMING AND REPAIR. HAVE YOU BEEN REPAIRED?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Lando laughed. “Any secret urges to sweep up or take out the garbage?”

  “Lando, this is serious. I want to know what happened!”

  “Touchy! Okay, I concede, I grew, I shrank—but I’ve got you on another one: Mohs. The Hall said organic lifeforms, plural.”

  “QUITE CORRECT, SIR, YOUR INTESTINAL FLORA, OTHER SYMBIOTIC ORGANISMS, ALL WERE GREATLY ALTERED IN SIZE, THEN BROUGHT BACK TO NORMAL MAGNITUDE AS PART OF—”

  “What about Mohs. Was there another human being with us when we entered, and what happened to him?”

  The hall was silent—a guilty silence if ever there was one. Lando realized suddenly that relations between mechanical intelligences weren’t all that different from those between organic ones.

  “Well?”

  More silence.

  Lando looked at Vuffi Raa. “That thing mistook you for a maintenance bug, and bummed up your memory trying to ‘repair’ you. That’s why you don’t remember Mohs. Now it feels ashamed.”

  Vuffi Raa looked at Lando. “I certainly hope so, Master, I certainly hope so. What are we going to do, once we reach the Harp?”

  “Shhhh! The walls have ears. We’re going to use it in whatever manner was intended—rather, take it to somebody who knows how to and let him do it.”

  “You mean the governor?”

  “That fat ape? No, I mean Gepta. He’s the one who really says when we get to leave this lousy system.”

  They shuffled onward, trying, occasionally, to get the hall’s attention again. Since it obviously hadn’t gone away, it must have been ignoring them. Finally they reached the base of the raised platform on which the Mindharp stood. It wasn’t as bad as Lando had predicted: the ceiling was much lower—Vuffi Raa was now his old familiar size again—and the room felt smaller, but it was still huge and awe-imposing. As was the altar.

  A dozen meters high, it was cut from a single perfectly transparent slab of what appeared to be life-crystal. It was hexagonal in cross section, with corners one could practically cut himself on. Otherwise, it was smooth and featureless.

  It would be a long, difficult climb.

  Lando sat down to consider the problem. His survival kit included no rope, suction cups, antigravs. Its designers had anticipated he would be among others�
��fellow soldiers—and had shared out supplies in a package that was sold originally to an entire squad. They had not anticipated that survival would necessitate committing a burglary.

  “Any ideas, Vuffi Raa?”

  “No, Master. If I were small again …”

  “You never were small, remember? We argued about that and you won.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You argued so persuasively that I forgot for a moment.”

  “Vuffi Raa, I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “You’re welcome, Master.”

  “Don’t call me Master.” He thought some more, then: “Hey, Hall?”

  “MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?”

  “I hope so. How come you didn’t answer us back there?”

  “I’M SORRY, I WAS THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING. MAY I HELP YOU NOW?”

  “Sure. Does this pylon sink into the floor or anything?”

  “NO, I’M AFRAID THAT IT DOES NOT.”

  “You don’t happen to have a ladder handy, do you?”

  “NO, SIR, I AM NOT SO EQUIPPED.”

  Lando mused for a long time. Despite his long sleep, he was tired and hungry—jacket rations aren’t everything their manufacturers claim for them. In fact, they aren’t anything their manufacturers claim, except that they’ll keep you alive.

  “Say! Can you make me big again?”

  “CONGRATULATIONS, SIR, YOU HAVE PASSED THE TEST, YES, I CAN ENLARGE YOUR SIZE. DO YOU WISH ME TO BEGIN NOW?”

  “Can you make me normal again, afterward? The size I am now—provided that’s the size I started out before we entered the pyramid?”

  “IMMEDIATELY UPON YOUR REQUEST, SIR.”

  He looked at Vuffi Raa. “Well, here we go again.”

  “ ‘We,’ Master?”

  “Now don’t start that! Okay, Hall, let’s do it!”

  This time it was perceptible. Lando watched the room and everything in it shrink around him, Vuffi Raa grew smaller, the altar shorter. It only took a few moments. “How the devil does this work, anyway, Hall? I thought it was supposed to be impossible—cube–square relationships and my bones not supporting my weight above a certain size and everything. That’s why I figured Vuffi Raa had shrunk—plenty of problems there, but fewer, I think.”

  “OH, NO PROBLEMS AT ALL, SIR,” the Hall began. Lando noticed that its voice wasn’t disturbed at all by the change in scales. Good engineers, those Sharu. “WHAT ARE YOU, NO OFFENSE, SIR, BUT ORGANIZED INFORMATION? WHAT DOES IT MATTER HOW DENSELY THAT INFORMATION IS COMPRESSED? AN OLD-FASHIONED BOOK MAY BE PRINTED UPON THICK PAPER, WITH THE LINES DOUBLE-SPACED. STILL, IT IS THE SAME INFORMATION, IS IT NOT?”

  “You trying to tell me I’ve been sort of spread-out, like? I’m not sure I like that thought. Well, here we are. Vuffi Raa? That’s all right, you don’t have to talk back. Just help me with this thing once I get it down—it’s going to be big.”

  At present, the Mindharp rested on the flat upper surface of the pylon. It was a precise replica of the Key, except for size, and, in his present condition, it felt the same to Lando as the Key had. He reached down to take it, it came away without resistance. He started to put it in his pocket—

  “Master … don’t … do … that.”

  “Right! It’d mess up my jacket a bit when I shrank back down, wouldn’t it? Okay, Hall, let’s lower me back where I belong.”

  Silence.

  “Hall? Hey, you’re supposed to shrink me again! Get with it!”

  There was no reply.

  “Look, Hall, if you don’t listen, I’m going to take this obscene artifact and—”

  “OH, I’M VERY SORRY, SIR. WOOL-GATHERING AGAIN. I HAVE AN INCREASING TENDENCY TO THAT, AS THE MILLENNIA ROLL ON. I TAKE IT YOU WISH TO BE REDUCED AGAIN.”

  “You take it right.”

  With that, Lando began to shrink once more, the Mindharp growing perceptibly in his hands as he did so. He stooped gently, set it on the floor beside Vuffi Raa, straightened, and folded his arms over his chest.

  The Mindharp was an armful when Lando had been restored to his natural size. Perhaps a meter in its greatest extent, it was even more visually distressing than the tiny model he had played with in the beginning.

  “Vuffi Raa, take one end of this. Hall, how do we get out of here?”

  “BEHIND THE PILLAR, SIR, AND GOOD LUCK.”

  “Well, good luck to you, too. Maybe someday they’ll hold concerts here.”

  “I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT, SIR. I RATHER LIKE THE PEACE AND QUIET.”

  Behind the pylon was a wall.

  Embedded in the wall was a Key.

  Perhaps it was the same Key, Lando thought—this building seemed to like little jokes like that. The question was, how did you use it? It protruded somehow from the wall. He let one hand go from the Mindharp, reached out to touch its smaller counterpart.

  There was a flash! and a hole began opening in the wall, like the iris of an ancient camera. Lando and Vuffi Raa stepped through.

  Into the busy daytime streets of Teguta Lusat.

  • XIX •

  “OFFICER,” VUFFI RAA demanded, summoning the first constabulary cop he saw on the street. The robot pointed a tentacle at Lando. “Arrest this man immediately. Orders of the governor.”

  Lando stopped, stunned. They hadn’t taken three steps away from the side of the Sharu ruin they’d emerged from. He looked back—the aperture they’d walked through was gone. He held the Mindharp to his chest, walked back a step, another, until his back was against the wall.

  “Why, you little—”

  “That’ll be enough of that,” the cop ordered. “I can’t arrest a man on the word of a machine. I’ll have to check it out with H.Q.” He touched the side of his helmet, communed momentarily with the radio inside it, then waved off with one hand the small crowd that was beginning to gather.

  Lando took a small, quiet step sideways. No one seemed to notice. He took another, and another. Only a few more steps to a corner where he just might be able to—

  “Officer!” Vuffi Raa shouted. “He’s trying to get away!”

  “Thanks a lot, you atom-powered fink!”

  The policeman drew his blaster, held it steady on Lando’s chest. “Well—first time I’ve ever heard of a droid with a security clearance like that, but—hold still, you! We’ll have some transportation in a minute, then we’ll all take a nice little ride.”

  The governor’s office looked much the same as it had before, even to the absence of Rokur Gepta the Sorcerer of Tund. With the Mindharp lying across the crystalline desk, Lando wondered why the wizard wasn’t present to claim the prize he’d sought so avidly.

  He didn’t wonder very long.

  “Good afternoon,” Duttes Mer said, entering from the right and easing himself into his chair. “I see you have the object. Very good. You could tell me one little thing, though, if you would be so kind.”

  Lando was standing between two of Teguta Lusat’s finest once again. This time Vuffi Raa was present, standing beside the governor’s desk.

  “Anything you want to know,” Lando said, trying hard for cheerfulness and not quite making it.

  “EXACTLY WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THESE LAST FOUR MONTHS?” The governor calmed himself down, straightened his neckcloth, blinked.

  “Four months?” Lando asked, reeling from one astonishing development after—so that was it! The time differential. What had seemed like a couple of days to him had actually been sixty times that long. “Governor, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Ask your treacherous friend, here. He’ll tell you—unless he’s a congenital liar.”

  “Don’t be too hard on the droid, Captain. He did what he was programmed to do: play the Emissary’s part so that the natives would help you find the Harp. Also, to report to me the instant the Harp was in your possession. It would seem I’ve had a stroke of luck in that respect, however. How is it that you flew to Rafa V and returned here without being picked up on planetary defense sensors? We really hav
e a nice, modern system, you know.”

  “You tell him, Vuffi Raa, since you’re such a blabbermouth anyway.”

  “Sir,” the robot said, “the Sharu appear to have some method of matter transport. I’m not certain when the transition occurred, and I am told that you lost track of my telemetry the instant we entered the pyramid on Rafa V. The shift could have been any time afterward, from the inside wall of the pyramid to the aperture through which we stepped into the street here in Teguta Lusat.”

  The governor patted his stumpy fingers together. “Well, well. A technological bonus, if we can unravel its secret. In the meantime, as I said, a stroke of unexpected luck. You see, Captain, my, er, colleague is orbiting Rafa V this very minute, waiting for your emergence there.”

  “Haw, haw. I am here. And I have the Mindharp. It would appear that I am something of a lucky gambler, too, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lando shrugged indifferently. This wasn’t going to turn out good, no matter what he did, and there wasn’t any point in giving the fat slob any satisfaction.

  “Come now, Captain, consider: Rokur Gepta hired an anthropologist—a real one, mind you, with genuine credentials—to investigate the system. The poor fellow thought he was working for me, which gave us the opportunity to appropriate his paycheck from Imperial funds, and yielded Gepta the enjoyment of misdirection he seems to treasure so much for its own sake.

  “Meanwhile, we set a little trap. In return for the offer of a new job, once his investigations here were finished, the anthropologist went to Oseon 2795 in search of, well, shall we say a suitably gullible individual to do our work for us.”

  Interested despite himself, and aware that Mer’s desire for, what, approval? might show him a way out of the mess, Lando asked, “Why didn’t you just hire yourself another sucker—or let your tame scientist get the Mindharp for you? Why me, and why maneuver me into it, rather than simply coming out and—”

  The governor laughed. “You know the legends. It had to be a wandering adventurer from the stars, a stranger to the Toka, someone they hadn’t seen snooping around, recording their chants and so forth. And the truth. Why, Captain, if you had known the truth about the Mindharp, you would be about to assume absolute power over the minds of everyone in the system, rather than myself. That is another mistake my esteemed colleague made. Thus we looked for a freighter captain down on his luck—and on Oseon 2795 everybody’s down on his luck—in a place where we had the, er, cooperation of local law-enforcement personnel. We let you think you’d won the robot, and put you in a position where you had to flee—”